This page is part of the Australian Constitutional Information Site
Constitutions of Other Countries
The drafters of the Commonwealth Constitution fused some ideas from the Constitution of the United States of America with some of the principles of the (unwritten) British Constitution, and added an amendment method closely based on that in the Constitution of Switzerland. Today, if we want to enter into informed Constitutional debate we should be aware of the ideas that have been incorporated into the Constitutions of other countries. We may reject them as inappropriate for Australia but we should be ready to acknowledge good ideas that have first been tried somewhere else - just as the original drafters did.
Other Federations
United States of America
Federal Republic of Germany
Republic of South Africa
Canada
Switzerland - see in particular article 123 from which our constitutional amendment procedure was copied.
Republics with a non-executive, directly-elected, President
In 1998-9 there was some debate about how to make it clear that the powers of the President are limited, and suggestions that it would be more necessary if we had a directly elected President. So here are links to the 4 European republics that have non-executive, directly-elected Presidents. If you compare them you can see that they spell out the powers of the President in different ways, and that they don't all make it totally clear that the real decision-making is to be left to the Prime Minister (is that obvious from the Constitution of Iceland, for example?) Yet all four countries are stable democracies where the President allows the Prime Minister and other Ministers to govern as intended.
- Iceland;
- Ireland - from John Walsh's site as several short files, or the Taoiseach's site in one bigger file (also available in RTF or PDF form (Who or what is a Taoiseach? The Prime Minister, and it's pronounced teeSHOCK);
- Austria [the most recent English translation, based on the 1983 text; many amendments have been made since 1983 but I believe none are relevant here];
- Portugal
And, for comparison, here is the Constitution of Israel (where the President is elected by the Parliament), which shows that even where the President is not directly elected it is sometimes assumed that it is a good idea to spell out what the President's functions are and to make it clear that s/he is not head of the government.
Preambles
Preambles in Other Countries [one of the CCF Fact Sheets].
Other lists
International Constitutional Law - the authoritative collection at the University of Berne.
A few links at the International Association for Constitutional Law
Wiretap's list includes historical curiosities such as the Constitutions of the Confederate States and the Iroquois Confederacy as well as many modern national constitutions. Go up to the parent directory and you'll find the Maastricht treaty and more.
The "Washlaw", site at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kansas has more links (some to Wuerzburg, some to official sites in the country in question).
The Constitution Finder at the University of Richmond - like Washlaw, some links are to Wuerzburg, some to national sites.
Constitutions in the Americas from the Political Database of the Americas at Georgetown University
Solon Law Archive has eight countries
Written by John Pyke, with a little help from DiDa!. Last revised 23 October 2002.